John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I got the following email that was received by ICSA customers:

Dear Valued Customer:

Your organization has received product testing and certification services as a customer of ICSA Labs, a division of MCI Communications Services, Inc., d/b/a Verizon Business Services (“ICSA Labs”).

I am writing to inform you that ICSA Labs will no longer be accepting new engagements for product testing and certification, or renewing expiring Statement(s) of Service. However, please be assured that we will continue to honor any existing, active Statements of Service that we may have with your organization, and to maintain any current certifications for the applicable term.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions, please contact icsalabsinfo@icsalabs.com.

Sincerely,

George Japak
ICSA Labs, Managing Director

Does this mean ICSA is withdrawing as an EHR Certifying body (ATCB)? I asked EHR certification expert, Jim Tate, which EHR certifying bodies remain if ICSA is pulling out and he said that right now Drummond, ICSA, InfoGard, and SLI are authorized to test and only Drummond, ICSA, and InfoGard are authorized to certify. You can find more details on the ONC website.

A part of me isn’t really surprised since the EHR certification business isn’t a great business. There are a limited number of clients and a limited amount of revenue available. Plus, under meaningful use, EHR certification became a commodity. That’s why CCHIT couldn’t survive. Seems like ICSA Labs is heading the same direction as CCHIT.

The bigger question I would ask is should EHR certification continue at all?

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

We’re entering a really interesting and challenging time when it comes to meaningful use. We’ve often wrote about the inverse relationship between incentive and requirements that exists with meaningful use. As meaningful use stage 2 is now becoming a reality for many organizations and EHR vendors, the backlash against it is really starting to heat up.

If you don’t think this is the case, this slide from the HIT Policy Committee presentation says it a lot when it comes to organizations’ view of meaningful use stage 2.

For those that can’t believe what they’re reading, you’re reading it right. 4 hospitals have attested to meaningful use stage 2 and 50 providers as of May 1st. Certainly it’s still relatively early for meaningful use stage 2, but these numbers provide a stark contrast when you think about the early rush to get EHR incentive money during meaningful use stage 1.

This article by Healthcare IT News goes into many of the strains that were seen in the HIT Policy Committee. Sounded like the healthcare IT version of Real Housewives. However, the point they’re discussing are really important and people on both sides have some really strong opinions.

My favorite quote is this one in reply to the idea that we don’t need EHR certification at this point: “Deputy national coordinator Jacob Reider, MD, disagreed. Ongoing certification is required to give physicians and hospitals the security they need when purchasing products.”

Looks like he stole that line from CCHIT (see also this one). What security and assurance does EHR Certification provide the end user? The idea is just so terribly flawed. The only assurance and security someone feels buying a certified EHR is that they can get the EHR ID number off the ONC-CHPL when they apply for the EHR incentive money. The EHR certification can’t even certify EHR to a standard so that they can share health data. EHR Certification should go away.

I’m also a huge fan of the movement in that committee to simplify and strip out the complexity of meaningful use. I wish they’d strip it down to just interoperability. Then, the numbers above would change dramatically. Although, I’ve learned that the legislation won’t let them go that simple. For example, the legislation requires that they include quality measures.

No matter which way they go, I think meaningful use is in a tenuous situation. It’s indeed on the ropes. It hasn’t quite fallen to the mat yet, but it might soon if something dramatic doesn’t happen to simplify it.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Is there a backlog of EHR vendors that want to schedule test dates with ICSA labs?

A: There is no backlog. Since ICSA Labs received its ONC authorization, it has been our intent to grow our healthcare programs and offer the best testing and certification program in the industry. Over time we have ramped up our testing team and we have a deep pool of very experienced testers on staff. We have been getting a steady stream of news customers and inquiries and expect the CCHIT announcement will accelerate the pace. At this point we have the capacity to test applicants as they are prepared to do so.

Is ICSA Labs able to support the onslaught of EHR companies that will come over from CCHIT? Will that cause any delays on getting EHRs certified?

A: ICSA Labs at this point does not anticipate any delays. The ONC program was designed so that vendors and product developers would have a choice when it came to testing and certification. We were not the first lab to be authorized, but we knew that given the opportunity we would be able to deliver a program where customers would experience high satisfaction.

In my post, I suggested that the economics of EHR certification aren’t all that great. Especially if you have a legacy cost structure like CCHIT. Is the secret to ICSA’s success having a broader certification business beyond just EHR?

A: ICSA Labs has been in business since 1989, we have a number of accreditations to support an array of certification and testing programs, such as the IHE USA Certification program which just kicked off its second year at the 2014 IHE North American Connectathon. Our business is diverse and we leverage our capabilities across our business. We are used to doing business in competitive markets, so it has always been important for our programs and cost structure to emphasize efficiency and effectiveness and those benefits are passed onto our customers. Our testing and certification programs have always been competitively priced and efficient yet rigorous and done superior quality.

How much more complex is 2014 EHR certification compared with 2011 from an ONC-ACB perspective?

A: As any recently certified company can attest to, the 2014 Edition criteria are significantly more complicated than the 2011 Edition. There are more test tools to maintain; more test data sets to review; frequent revisions and updates to the criteria and additional types of attestation to review. The time to complete testing has close to doubled and there are more requirements as they pertain to surveillance. After the 2011 Edition criteria, ICSA Labs asked for ONC to raise the bar, and they did. For ICSA Labs the added complexity was not unexpected.

The timelines for meaningful use stage 2 are starting to get squeezed. Will the majority of EHR vendors be 2014 certified and ready in time?

A: There will always be stragglers, but I believe a majority of EHR vendors will be 2014 certified and ready in time for Meaningful Use 2. There has been an uptick in the vendors getting certified over the last few months. Providers and hospitals however are a different story, and they may feel the squeeze in terms of the timeline to purchase, implement and begin meaningfully using their EHR system. ONC extended the Stage 2 timeline to relieve some of that pressure.

I’ve heard that in some cases the ONC-CPHL has been slow at putting up newly certified EHRs. Have you seen this? Do you have a bunch of 2014 certified EHR vendors that haven’t been listed on ONC-CPHL yet?

A: The ONC-CHPL is generally responsive to our concerns and we work with them as they continue to refine new features like links to the public test results summary.

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies. Contact her at @ziegerhealth on Twitter or visit her site at Zieger Healthcare.

Most organizations hoping to achieve Meaningful Use milestones buy their way in, by acquiring certified technology from an established EMR vendor. However, there are still some organizations that are working to create in-house technology that meets Meaningful Use standards.

MAeHC, a not-for-profit health IT organization, has created a modular EMR for clinical quality measurements (CQM) reporting, which the CCHIT certified to support Meaningful Use Stage 2, IW reports. The MAeHC product, which is hosted in the cloud, integrates with stand-alone EMRs and can span across multiple EMR platforms.

Getting certified was partly a matter of interpreting the criteria for Stage 2, which include capture and export, import and calculate and electronic submission, MAeHC execs told IW.

From the get-go, for example, the first criterion was problematic, as “capture and export” require EMRs to electronically record data and export it using established standards. MAeHC’s EMR has no user interface to manually key in data.

But the group’s leaders were determined to meet all three criteria, and they managed to get all of their issues sorted out. The MAeHC system is now certified for eligible providers and should be certified for eligible hospitals within the next few weeks,according to IW.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Dr. Sullivan is a practicing cardiologist who joined DrFirst in 2004, just after completing his term as President of the Massachusetts Medical Society. He is known throughout the healthcare industry as the father of the Continuity of Care Record (“CCR”) and a leader on the future of healthcare technology. He is assisting DrFirst in ensuring that Rcopia continues to add the functionality necessary to maintain its leadership position both in electronic prescribing and in the channel of communication between various sectors of the healthcare community and the physician. Dr. Sullivan is active in organized medical groups at the state and national level, and is both a delegate to the AMA and the Chairperson of their Council on Medical Service as well as past Co-Chair of the Physicians EHR Consortium.

The buzz surrounding Electronic Health Records (EHR) is nothing short of constant. The daunting task of selection, purchase and implementation is quite confusing, technical, and expensive, with many physicians, clinics and health systems uncertain of their needs and questioning how the technology is going to impact the way they practice medicine and their bottom line. It’s all about workflow and productivity.

More recently, Providers are faced with the intimidating task of deciding which kind of system to install. There are all inclusive systems, often referred to as fully paperless or standard EHRs and there are so called a la carte systems known as modular EHRs.

The Case for Modular

Modular EHR systems allow providers to take a stepping stone approach to health IT clinical documentation and order writing, by choosing the tools and functions which make the most sense in their practices and clinics; improving specialized workflow and efficiency. Going the modular route can gradually ease the provider and the office staff into a more paperless environment without having to make a full and often-times difficult transition to a fully paperless workspace.

There is need for caution however. The sheer volume of modules available can make selecting appropriate ones an overwhelming task. Not only do clinicians need to be wary of which modules they are choosing, but also what functions have been certified by an authorized organization.

By combining specific modular systems, it can become “qualified,” making the user eligible for the monetary reimbursements set forth by Title IV of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

At DrFirst, our Rcopia-MUTM has taken all of the guess work out of this process and is a completely certified Modular EHR that physicians can implement and start earning incentive money directly out-of-the-box.

The implementation of a complete EHR system can be confusing and time consuming. Herein lays some distinct advantages of implementing a modular EHR. Practices that have already implemented e-prescribing or registry modules may not need to relearn a different system, or move their data from one to another (as long as the current module is certified).

Providers who are considering going the modular route can check the certification status of their options at Certified Health IT Products List. The cost for a modular approach is often much less expensive and providers can select the modules from various vendors to meet their financial and practice-based needs. Upon implementation, providers must show they’re using certified EHR technology in measureable ways to receive their incentive monies from the Federal Government. With this very high ROI, many providers see the advantage of using the modular approach to postpone the decision process in selecting a complete EHR and yet at the same time earn Meaningful Use incentive money to put towards the cost of the much more expensive system.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, doctors who have not adopted an EHR (either modular or complete) by 2015 will be penalized by Medicare — a 1% penalty to begin, then up to 3% within three years. Many providers are banking on the reimbursement that has been made available by the ARRA to help offset the initial costs.

What is your practice considering, complete EHR or modular? Do you see benefits of one over the other?

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

If you want to see my analysis of the other 101 EMR and EHR tips, I’ll be updating this page with my 101 EMR and EHR tips analysis. So, click on that link to see the other EMR tips.

60. Reporting, reporting, reporting, reports
What’s the point in collecting the data if you can’t report on it? I’ve before about the types of EMR reports that you can get out of the EMR system. The reports a hospital require will be much more robust than an ambulatory practice. In fact, outside of the basic reports (A/R, Appointments, etc), most ambulatory practices that I know don’t run very many reports. I’d say it’s haphazard report running at best.

Although, I won’t be surprised if the need to report data from your EHR increases over the next couple years. Between the meaningful use reporting requirements and the movement towards ACO’s, you can be sure that being able to have a robust reporting system built into your EHR will become a necessity.

59. Are the meaningful use (MU) guidelines covered by your product?
Assuming you want to show meaningful use, make sure your EHR vendor is certified by an ONC-ATCB. Next, talk to some of their existing users that have attested to meaningful use stage 1. Third, ask them about their approach for handling meaningful use stage 2 and 3. Fourth, evaluate how they’ve implemented some of the meaningful use requirements so you get an idea of how much extra work you’ll have to do beyond your regular documenting to meet meaningful use.

58. It they aren’t CCHIT certified take a really really hard look
Well, it looks like this tip was written pre-ONC-ATCB certifying bodies. Of course, readers of this site and its sister site, EMR and HIPAA, will be aware that CCHIT Has Become Irrelevant. Now it’s worth taking a hard look if the EHR isn’t an ONC-ATCB certified EHR. There are a few cases where it might be ok, but they better have a great reason not to be certified. Not because the EHR certification provides you any more value other than the EHR vendor will likely need that EHR certification to stay relevant in the current EHR market.

57. What billing systems do you interface with?
These days it seems in vogue to have an integrated EMR and PMS (billing system). Either way, it’s really important to evaluate how your EMR is going to integrate with your billing. Plus, there can be tremendous benefits to the tight integration if done right.

56. How much do changes and customizations cost?
In many cases, you can see and plan for the customization that you’ll need as part of the EHR implementation. However, there are also going to be plenty of unexpected customizations that you don’t know about until you’re actually using your EHR (Check out this recent post on Unexpected EHR Expenses). Be sure to have the pricing for such customizations specified in the contract. Plus, as much as possible try to understand how open they are to doing customizations for their customers.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I’ve had a number of EMR companies ask me where they can get help to become a certified EHR. There’s certainly plenty of resources online, but I find that most EMR companies want some real hands on experience and help to be able to navigate the EHR certification process. Whenever I’m asked this question, I always tell those people to go and talk with Jim Tate.

I still remember when I first met Jim Tate at HIMSS last year. I was hanging around the HIMSS exhibit floor because I was early to a meeting with a vendor. I’m sure I was in a partially lost state since I was trying to figure out what to do with the few minutes I had available before my meeting when I heard someone say my name.

I looked up from my lost state to see who was saying my name and saw an all too familiar face for which I couldn’t place. The person then said, “You’re techguy right?” (I’m @techguy on Twitter, and @ehrandhit as well). Then, everything clicked and I said, “You’re Jim Tate right?” See the funny thing was that Jim and I had never met in person, but obviously both of us had seen each others healthcare IT tweets many times before (I think he enjoyed reading my rips on CCHIT pre-HITECH). It’s always interesting (and usually fun) to meet someone in person that you feel like you already know online.

Personal stories aside, I’ve still gotten to know Jim Tate more online than I did in person. I hope that will change at HIMSS this year. Even if it’s just running across Jim on the HIMSS exhibit floor or one of the various parties. Jim has an incredible amount of knowledge and experience in EMR certification. I’m not sure what it says about me that I find the idea of sitting around with Jim listening to old EMR certification “war stories” to be really interesting.

Of course, what prompted my storytelling about Jim Tate? A tweet Jim recently sent that said he’d worked with 90+ HIT vendors. He has a great EMR certification page on his website which has over 75 Ambulatory and Inpatient EMR vendors that he’s worked with. That’s A LOT of EMR companies. You can see the image of EMR companies he’s helped at the bottom of this post.

One ONC-ATCB recently told me that many of the EHR companies that come to them are incredibly well informed, others are just missing some of the details and others are just completely lost. I’m quite sure Jim Tate’s EMR companies fall into the first category.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I’m not sure how many of you find it interest, but I know I have at least a reasonable number of EHR vendors out there that read this site. Plus, the number of available certified EHR vendors should be interesting to anyone that participates in the industry.

The EMR Daily News recently did a post breaking down the official ONC CHPL list of certified EHR vendors. Here’s my general summary of the numbers:Total EHR Certifications: 329Certified Ambulatory EHR: 234Certified In Patient EHR: 95

I just checked the list myself and found 350 total EHR vendors, 250 ambulatory certified EHR, and 100 Certified In Patient EHR. Although, since those numbers are so round, I’m going to assume that EMR Daily News did a better job looking at the list. I just went off the numbers that the website provided.

Either way, 329 EHR companies is a lot of companies. Granted, that’s not 329 full comprehensive EHR vendors, but the majority of them are or will be. Is there any wonder that there’s such a thirst for tools to help people narrow down the EHR vendor selection process?

I know that SLI is talking to a lot of EHR vendors and I imagine the Verizon associated ATCB is too. Of course, this says to me that there’s still a lot of EHR vendors that are going to be added to this list.

I talked to one industry person about the number of EHR vendors and they said they had 600 on their EHR vendor list. From the looks of this, they might not be all that far off with that number.

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies. Contact her at @ziegerhealth on Twitter or visit her site at Zieger Healthcare.

Last month, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) became the first hospital to to have its EHR certified as “complete” by the CCHIT.

BIDMC was part of a pilot program testing out CCHIT’s EHR Alternative Certification for Hospitals (EACH), a special program for installed hospital EHR technology.

BIDMC, which runs all-Intersystems Cache-based hospital systems and Microsoft SQL Server-based business intelligence systems, had to follow 500 pages of NIST scripts over 8 hours to satisfy the examiners.

While many of those scripts made sense to Halamka, some seemed just plain odd. For example, he notes, NIST scripts require hospitals to place a CPOE order for Darvocet for pain control, even though Darvocet has been removed from the market by the FDA. In another case, a script required Beth Israel to send data to a public health entity about an infection the patient did not have, he says.

All told, if your hospital is planning to try for EACH certification, you’d better be well prepared, Halamka suggests. “I recommend that hospitals devote at least 2 weeks and 5 FTEs to reviewing the scripts, analyzing the best way to show the necessary functionality, and practicing the demonstration,” Halamka warns readers of his Life as a Healthcare CIO blog.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Today, HHS announced two more organizations that have been approved as ONC-ATCB for EHR certification:SLI Global Solutions – Denver CO
Date of authorization: December 10, 2010.
Scope of authorization: Complete EHR and EHR Modules.

ICSA Labs is an Independent Division of Verizon Business. I met with the CMO of Verizon at last year’s HIMSS where he told me that ICSA labs would become a certifying body (sorry I can’t find the post right now).

Both are very legitimate organizations with some definite interest and expertise in the healthcare space. For example, Verizon is making a big play with their Verizon HIE product offering.

I’ll see about getting more details on each of these new EHR certifying bodies so that we can see how they compare against the other ONC-ATCB. 5 EHR Certifying bodies. That’s probably enough to keep it competitive.